Men forced to choose between DW and DC or birth family - hoping for success stories

[successstories]

NC for this. I find this topic very painful so I will try to keep it generic

I've seen examples of men who are forced by their DW, who is very dominant, to disrespect and somewhat neglect their birth family, hence pushing them apart.

Let's assume parents are not (and have never been) toxic or abusive and these men are not financially dependent on their DWs. Also these men have always had a good relationship with their parents, so no unresolved issues involved.

Can you share any success stories of husbands who could regain some balance, stand up to their wives without it ending up in divorce or them going NC with their birth family?

What did it take? Can it be done?

1. a man should be perfectly capable of engaging with and having a relationship with his own family, with or without his wife. I find myself less than sympathetic to the vague suggestions by OP that he's being "prevented" by DW although of course, that kind of abuse could be happening. It's not standard though. And, if it is, advice would be different as it would for anyone in an abusive situation.

1. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how hard it is for people to realise that the dynamic changes when a new person enters the family. For DH and my relationship to work, we both had to make some changes to our thinking and behaviours. So today, things that in my birth family would just never have happened are pretty standard for me and similar for DH. My family have always been very good about accepting and accommodating these changes. DH's family not as much in the beginning but actually, they are too now and I respect MIL in particular for being willing and able to compromise.

1. MILs do seem to often have this idea that their DIL is not "looking after" their darling DS sufficiently. This is the one I see the most in RL and on here where MIL is upset with DIL. This attitude is silly and should be stopped.

1. DILs tend to blame MILs for any negative aspect of their partner's personality. Again, something I see in RL and here a lot. And also something that is ridiculous.

It is not the DW’s job to facilitate the DH keeping in touch with his family. He should arrange calls/meet ups/invitations/cards/gifts with his parents/siblings; emotional labour does not belong to females. If he doesn’t do so then the ILs should call him out on his behaviour.

The danger there is the ds not being happy to be called out on his behaviour, complaining to his DW who then assumes the IL are just a pain in the arse thus creating even more distance in between them.

My sons are in the cups of being adults and I have to say I’m not looking forward to navigate those waters tbh.

When my Dad married my Mum & then us became his priority.

Mum didn't work, her Mum was 15mins walk away so we saw a lot of her.

I think my dad never got on that well with his parents.

Visits there always seemed more formal with no easy flow of conversation.

I remember that they would talk about his siblings a lot and it came across as them being more interested/proud of them, so understandable that dad wasn't that bothered about seeing them!

We always seemed to be down the pecking order of being visited by them as well!

They had a daughter who they spent most of their time with.

I think it rankled for all the siblings.

I find it amazing how it's always the DIL's fault that the man doesn't engage with his family. Even though I am constantly hearing women complain that they have to do all the contact, arrange family events, invite In laws to things, buy the gifts, organise the birthday cards..... It's like before they're married a man will have at least some contact with his family. Then he gets married and he considers it his wife's fault and if she isn't willing to do it.... it's her fault.

DH would say he's close to SIL. She lives close to us. But I make 90% of the effort to engage with her. Which mostly I'm fine with. But I 100% will not put up with any suggestion that if there's less engagement it's my fault.

@MananaTomorrow

It is not the DW’s job to facilitate the DH keeping in touch with his family. He should arrange calls/meet ups/invitations/cards/gifts with his parents/siblings; emotional labour does not belong to females. If he doesn’t do so then the ILs should call him out on his behaviour.

The danger there is the ds not being happy to be called out on his behaviour, complaining to his DW who then assumes the IL are just a pain in the arse thus creating even more distance in between them.

My sons are in the cups of being adults and I have to say I’m not looking forward to navigate those waters tbh.

Sure. But that's still not DIL's fault. It's still the problem with DS.

@successstories

The title says 'and DC'?

If so, did anything happen to cause the relationship to break down?

Sometimes I've seen the relationship change and people show a completely different side to them when the DW has felt more secure in the relationship. For example after marriage or birth of the first child.

The birth of our child didn't make me more secure in my marriage, but it made my husband realise how much he loved his child and how much his parents treated him like a possession rather than a person. I expect I've been accused of "changing" him, driving a wedge, but he's come to the realisation independently because he's a person, not my possession.

[quote worriedatthemoment]@museumum would you say the same if it was a woman ? [/quote]
I'm not going to even try to pretend this is a gender-neutral issue. It is absolutely 100% about how society views women and men and family relationships so no, it is not the same for women and men.

@BlingLoving, I didn’t say it is the DIL fault/responsibility though.

Just that I can see how difficult it can be to navigate those waters. Because it’s nowhere as easy as ‘well if you have a strong relationship/not a MIL of hell, then you’ll see your ds and his family’.

@MananaTomorrow

Thankfully, I think most women manage to integrate hers, his and their own families. It's the clowns that think "a man's a son until he finds a wife, a daughter's a daughter for all of her life." and try implement that.

What you are saying though is that it’s still the woman work to integrate the families.
If they don’t make the effort, then it doesn’t happen….

It’s easy to see how from the man’s mother pov, what it looks like is that her ds has stopped seeing them since they got together/married. It’s also easy to see why it would feel it’s the DIL fault when everyone is expecting her to integrate the families/ensure they have contact with the IL etc….

No I'm not.

If a man can't be bothered that different from him not because his wife throws a piss fit if he wants to.

Most men integrate her family, his family and their own into their lives. As do most women. Sometimes it's as boring as hell or inconvenient of course.

However, where a man prevents his wife seeing her family as much as she wants by sulking, anger or guilt trips it is seen as abuse. There's plenty examples of women doing this on MN, usually complaining he did something with or for his parents or siblings. The old "a son's a son.." nonsense is trotted out and some pretend its the man's fault.

As I said thankfully most women (that being the majority of posters on MN) and people aren't like that.

In the UK - kids/family are still mainly the responsibility of the wife. But if the wife doesnt make an effort with the IL - how many husbands do. I think it also matters what kids saw growing up - for example, in the case of my husband, it was his dad who went to see their granny - so DH now assumes men can and do take kids to see the grandparents rather than the mum. It was the same in my family. Granted this was largely for rather unfortunate reasons that neither of us had maternal grandparents growing up. But it does mean that now DH takes our kids to see the grandparents - both sides and I see it as a lovely break for myself. But how many dad's do that? He also took 50% maternity leave and looked after our kid when he was six months old while I took a job in another country and commuted. Again - how many people do that.

So long as gender stereotypes persist that mean do careers, football and hobbies and wives juggle everything - then no it is not the fault of the wife that the in laws are excluded. Or only in so far as both the wife and the mother in law assume it's women's work to do family and kids

@HomeIsDogs

If people don’t talk to their parents, there is always a good reason. The parents will says that there isn’t, that they’ve done nothing wrong and blame others. But there’s always a good reason in my experience.

100% this.

OP are you saying you raised a man who bows to a ‘domineering’ woman that he picked to marry? And he can’t ask for help to escape this? And there’s no reason whatsoever why he may not be interested in having loads of contact with you (plural)?
How strange.

@successstories

NC for this. I find this topic very painful so I will try to keep it generic

I've seen examples of men who are forced by their DW, who is very dominant, to disrespect and somewhat neglect their birth family, hence pushing them apart.

Let's assume parents are not (and have never been) toxic or abusive and these men are not financially dependent on their DWs. Also these men have always had a good relationship with their parents, so no unresolved issues involved.

Can you share any success stories of husbands who could regain some balance, stand up to their wives without it ending up in divorce or them going NC with their birth family?

What did it take? Can it be done?

My DD’s mother did her best to push my family away. Giving me endless grief every time they came around (like shouting at me for literally hours every time they left) Attributing lots of negative qualities to my dad, setting up the inevitable later ‘you’re just like your dad’ remarks. Took me 6 years to get away, glad I did now it was the least crappy of a lot of crappy options.

It’s for each of us

Abuse aside, if an adult limits or stops contact with their parents, siblings or other family members (or indeed friends) that’s down to them and one person’s decisions and actions shouldn’t be attributed to others, eg a spouse.

Often I think it's because men run away from difficult situations and stick their heads in the sand so if there's a difficult dynamic between his parents and his wife he will just ignore it, not get involved and the whole thing gets worse until it's irreparable. Which is a generalization I know.

It depends though. My MIL is very rude to me. She selects the times she's rude to me to ensure no one else sees or hears it, when she leaves my house or I leave hers dh has found it hard to believe what she says

until one day it finally happened in front of him by accident. He was fixing something lying down on the floor and our room is in an L shape. She made yet another snide remark to me and he heard it from round the corner, she didn't realise he was there because he was on the floor but after the comment he got up. She just kept saying really loudly 'why didn't you tell me you were in the room' (to dh) 'you should have told me you were in the room' She knew she'd been caught.

Now I am finally genuinely believed, my dh has cut back time with MIL, she doesn't help us at all and I believe that if family are not helping you or making your life better ie be that emotionally or otherwise than why should any familial expectations be happening. 'Family' means more than just existing for the sake of it. We've only put up with MIL because society has told us that's the right thing to do. Now we've realised the strain it's put on our marriage isn't worth it so we've gone low contact almost nc now.

Wouldnt it also depend on the type of relationship everyone had before the grand kids arrived. For example, my impression is that lots of mothers will put up with sons only calling and being in touch once in a while. Well this isnt going to change once the grandkids arrive. The only thing that will happen is that the parents will be even busier with jobs and the kids and will have even less time for the ILs.

My impression is that a lot of men are unprepared for what it means to have kids i.e. essentially adding in an extra full time job. They like to keep their hobbies and leave the wife to take care of the social side of things.

If you had a token relationship until now - then you will only have a token relationship once the wife/kids come along.

MIL has behaved appallingly and caused a great deal of pain to DH at a very difficult time in his life. In fact she upset all 3 of her DC, and none of them spoke to her for over a year.

Whilst DH's siblings have decided to forgive, DH can't bring himself to. MIL likes to blame me for the fact she has no relationship with her eldest child, but it was her own behaviour. I would be happy and supportive if DH wanted to heal the rift, but he won't.

My mother blames my sister in law for my brother at being absolutely rubbish at keeping in touch with her...conveniently forgetting that he's always been shit at it, and that he told her when she got rid of her landline that he wouldn't be calling her on her mobile - my mother lives in Australia, my brother in the USA, so it's expensive.

Typically she gets a call from him twice a year now - on her birthday, and Christmas. Occasional emails and they send her presents...which she always hates and always blames my sister in law for. My sister in law got offered a very good job in the city my mother lives in.. the company flew her to Australia for 3 weeks so she could make the final decision...my mother was so horrible to her during that time she turned the job down!

OP because your post is quite vague it is hard to give any views or relevant examples.

You could be describing a scenario where a man has visited his parents every Wednesday and Sunday up till getting married, and then once he gets married and has kids, the wife says that’s too much as you’re needed at home. Or maybe he’s always given them money and she says no that’s needed for our kids now. IMO these things would be perfectly reasonable of her but the parents might feel it’s neglect.

On the other hand you could be describing a scenario where the wife is not allowing him to visit or speak to his family at all, because she doesn’t like them or feels they have slighted her (without any basis). In that case obviously she is not being reasonable.

And of course there’s a whole range of possibilities in between.

@HopefulProcrastinator

I have a feeling I'm being blamed by the in-laws for a distance that now exists between my husband and them.

All I did was stop making an effort after their behaviour made clear to me that I wasn't really family. I haven't been rude, bad-mouthed them or offered my husband ultimatums - I've just stopped and concentrated on my family instead.

From his perspective nothing has changed - except that's the problem. Because nothing has changed with him there is no longer an effort to see his family, remember their birthdays, buy Christmas gifts etc because I did it all and I no longer see why I should add extra work to my life for people who are at best indifferent to me.

I warned my husband that I was stopping and he has failed to step up.

Basically, don't be surprised if the wife isn't to blame...she's just stopped making any effort for whatever reason which could be utterly personal to her and nothing to do with you at all.

Same here. I don’t interfere with DHs relationship with his family - I just don’t have one myself with them. I might buy the odd present IF DH asks me too or make suggestions on free dates but other than that it’s up to him. So we rarely see them I’m sure I get the blame but I give precisely no shits

I am currently leaving a situation like this. From the outside, DH’s family seemed close and loving. Once on the inside, I realised how much effort and denial went into presenting this front, and what the cost was to some of those involved. “Othering”, scapegoating, malicious “teasing’ and huge competitiveness for favour were normalised in the family culture. I am the current scapegoat (the previous one having died) and I’m running for the hills. I think DILs are often convenient outlets for this kind of dysfunction.

Unless he is chained to a radiator, there is no way a man will be unable to continue friendly relationships with his family of origin.

If he gives in to manipulation and bullying then he is the one at fault.

This applies whether the manipulative woman involved is DIL or MIL. They can only control what they are being allowed to control.

Oh I remember being blamed for dh never visiting or calling or whatever. He was and is a grown ass man who can call or visit I couldn’t stop him even if I wanted too that that I wanted to it means he can tell his boring work rambling stories to them not me

Oh course most of the time women are closer to their mothers and yes after I gave birth I was more relaxed in the company of my mother than feeling I had to be perfect and on display for his family. The difference as well being my mum asked how I was before asking for a cuddle with baby where as the in-laws wanted to know how baby was and congratulations to my dh for becoming a father. Not me for giving birth or how do I felt or was I ok. My mum also made food and brand it around for us to simply reheat lovely.

Again I’m the one left buying the cards and presents for everyone this year I didn’t buy the cards, he went out Christmas Eve after I reminded him and then didn’t get them all.

It’s funny though my mum wouldn’t blame dh for me not getting her a card but the in-laws ask me where their cards are or did I remember to get X a card like I’m their child. The looks I get when I say I duno dh might of you’ll have to ask him. Big mean nasty dil that I am

Why are wives buying presents/cards for everyone??? Sounds insane

To be dutiful dils clearly because these men weren’t raised to think about such things. it’s not their fault either clearly.